The story opens with a young man playing internet games. Suddenly his face darkens and he begins to pound the keys nervously. His face changes to despair as he reads a message from another user. "Mr. 20-years old, do you have all the items?" The reply is: "I need one more." We next enter the lives of the residents of the Paradise Villa as a mystery unfolds.

Watch Paradise Villa Trailer :

Review :

Cleverly told and directed, but rather low on content.

I gave "Paradise Villa" a 7 but purely on the basis that I highly enjoyed its storytelling and direction. I don't know how you could think the movie is particularly scary. It's raw and violent, but not really scary. Actually it's closer to "Short Cuts" than "Panic Room" ...

The "Short Cuts"-comparison comes from a directorial viewpoint. "Paradise Villa" tells a lot of stories and connects them over and over again. I really dig that approach, especially because it's limited to this one house. In only 100 minutes you get a lot of looks into personal lives, into small problems, into neighborhood quarrels. Very nicely done. I have to admit that in the middle of the movie I had to skip back a couple of scenes to catch up with some of the connections of the people. I didn't pay attention for a second there and got the penalty later.

Ah, penalty. That brings me to football. The movie is done in real time. Remember "Lola Rennt" - "The game lasts for 90 minutes". True for "Paradise Villa" too. The game (Japan-Korea of course) isn't that important, but sets a nice tone and a feeling of time.

Let's go back to the people. The way the movie slowly reveals the connections among the people is marvelous. There's a phone call that results in a whole series of mishaps - and only late in the game you actually realize that the phone call was a complete misunderstanding. A lot of things told earlier now pay off - and that's true for most of the things you pick up along the way. There might be some logical bumps, but overall, it works.

Then of course, there's the violence. There's quite a lot of it, and all of a raw kind. The killings are very simple (mostly done by knife) and there's some violence off screen that you only catch via a grisly soundtrack. The violence didn't have such a big impact on me because a) I was hooked by the story more than by the killings and b) because the story is infused with a morbid sense of humor. We're not talking a "Pulp Fiction"-approach to the violence, but you cannot take it completely serious. I know it sounds contradictory (raw vs. ironic), but I just got that very feeling from the movie.

So don't watch it for the gore. There's some, but this is more a story-drive tale. Not one grand story, but a big amount of small, everyday stories. That's what makes the film rewarding in my view.